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Forgive OPP officer’s killer, widow urges

WINGHAM — Her voice quivering with emotion, the wife of a slain Ontario Provincial Police officer said she will struggle to forgive the man who shot and killed the father of her three sons.

“As hard as it is, I believe forgiveness is the only way to release us from the pain and the anger,” Heather Pham said on Friday at the funeral of her husband, Vu Pham, 37, who was shot Monday after pulling over a truck on a rural road.

OPP Constable Vu Pham's widow Heather Pham is consoled by her brother Luke Weber as the casket is loaded into a hearse during funeral services in Wingham, March 12, 2010. (MARK BLINCH / REUTERS)

“God has freely offered us forgiveness,” she said at the packed sports arena where her husband coached their three sons in hockey. “To the best of my human ability, with God’s help, I will offer it as well. My hope and my prayer is that all of you will do the same. I know it’s what Vu would have wanted.”

Fred Preston, 70, of Sundridge, who was charged with first-degree murder in Pham’s death, died in London hospital Thursday night. Preston’s family earlier told the media that he was distraught at the break-up of his marriage.

Some 8,000 police officers and rescue workers from across Canada and the northern United States listened to speakers tell of how Vu arrived alone at Pearson Airport in Toronto at the age of seven as a refugee from war-torn Vietnam, sponsored by the Elmira Pentecostal Assembly.

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There were so many officers at his funeral that the service was piped through loudspeakers outside the sportsplex, where thousands of police and members of the public paid tribute.

Speakers described Pham as a quiet, good-humoured, deeply religious man, who freely volunteered his time to help at his sons’ school, coached sports and gave his time as a church deacon.

Heather Pham said that he had enormous respect for his father, who was killed in the Vietnam War while serving as an officer in the South Vietnamese army.

“Vu was so proud of his dad,” Heather Pham said. “He was driven to be the best dad that he could be, always there for his boys.”

She said she never doubted that “he loved me fully and completely.”

She said she also always feared she would one day lose her husband to an on-the-job-tragedy.

“I have had visions and nightmares of being in this place, as I’m sure, every officer’s wife has … I still stand here unprepared,” she said.

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Premier Dalton McGuinty praised Pham for giving back to his adopted country, calling him “a man of peace who came to Ontario in search of a better life.”

“He understood profoundly bad things can happen in life, but Vu never let life get him down. ..... Vu built a life anyone of us would be proud of," McGuinty said.

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